In what feels like the opening pebble toss in a match between Goliath and David, the City of Goleta fired a formal request to the County of Santa Barbara to amend the Revenue Neutrality Agreement (RNA). The two sides meet on Thursday to discuss the obscure document, which Goleta claims has hobbled the city’s ability to maintain its services to its residents while unfairly benefiting the county.
The county supervisors held a closed-door session on Tuesday regarding Goleta, and the only comment made in public afterward was County Counsel Mike Ghizzoni re-stating the text in the day’s agenda for the closed meeting: that the letter opened the county to “significant exposure to civil litigation … involving the 2002 Revenue Neutrality Agreement.”
That agreement was approved by voters when Goleta was officially carved out of the county in 2002. The purpose was to compensate Santa Barbara County for the property and sales tax it lost to the newly formed city — or to neutralize the financial effect. The city now sends one-third of its sales tax to the county and half its property taxes, or about $7 million annually.